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Case, Valency and Transitivity
The three concepts of case, valency and transitivity belong to the most discussed topics of modern linguistics. On the one hand, they are crucially connected with morphological aspects of the clause, including case marking, person agreement and voice. On the other hand, they are related to several semantic issues such as the meaning of case, semantico-syntactic verbal classes, and the semantic correlates of transitivity. The volume unifies papers written within different theoretical frameworks and representing variegated approaches (Optimality Theory, Government and Binding, various versions of the Functional approach, Cross-linguistic and Typological analyses), containing both numerous new findings in individual languages and valuable observations and generalizations related to case, valency and transitivity.
[Studies in Language Companion Series, 77] 2006. xx, 503 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 1 July 2008
Published online on 1 July 2008
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
- Introduction | pp. vii–xix
- Part I. Morphological case
- Syntactic vs. morphological case: Implications for morphosyntaxAndrew Spencer | pp. 3–21
- Case systems in a diachronic perspective: A typological sketchLeonid Kulikov | pp. 23–47
- Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande: From the amorphous type to inflectional?Valentin Vydrin | pp. 49–64
- Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages: Agreement, determiners and the reconstruction of caseTyler Peterson | pp. 65–90
- Direction marking and case in MenomineeJochen Trommer | pp. 91–111
- Part II. Case-marking and transitivity
- A. Syntax of case
- Bare and prepositional differential case marking: The exotic case of German (and Icelandic) among all of GermanicWerner Abraham | pp. 115–145
- Control infinitives and case in Germanic: ‘Performance error’ or marginally acceptable constructions?Jóhanna Barðdal and Thórhallur Eythórsson | pp. 147–177
- Experiencer coding in Nakh-DaghestanianDmitry Ganenkov | pp. 179–202
- ‘Argument sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructionsKalyanamalini Sahoo | pp. 203–221
- B. Case interpretation
- Two approaches to specificityLars Johanson | pp. 225–247
- Case markednessPeter de Swart | pp. 249–267
- Incremental distinguishability of subject and objectHelen de Hoop and Monique Lamers | pp. 269–287
- C. Case and the typology of transitivity
- The woman showed the baby to her sister: On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitivesSeppo Kittilä | pp. 291–308
- Case semantics and the agent-patient oppositionÅshild Næss | pp. 309–327
- Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations: Constraining co-variationAndrej L. Malchukov | pp. 329–357
- Transitivity in SonghayJulia Galiamina | pp. 359–371
- Part III. Transitivity and valency change
- Syntactic valence, information structure, and passive constructions in KaqchikelGeorge Aaron Broadwell | pp. 375–392
- A very active passive: Functional similarities between passive and causative in BalkarEkaterina Lyutikova and Anastasia Bonch-Osmolovskaya | pp. 393–416
- Case marking, possession and syntactic hierarchies in Khakas causative constructions in comparison with other Turkic languagesAlexander Letuchiy | pp. 417–439
- Transitivity increase markers interacting with verbs semantics: Evidence from Finno-Ugric languagesElena Kalinina, Dmitriy Kolomatskiy and Alexandra Sudobina | pp. 441–463
- Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicativeChristian Lehmann and Elisabeth Verhoeven | pp. 465–493
- Language Index | pp. 495–497
- Subject Index | pp. 498–503
“The volume ‘Case, Valency and Transitivity’ is a fine collection of papers by authors coming from different countries and belonging to different theoretical frameworks but sharing some fundamental assumptions on what case and transitivity are and how they work, even though these assumptions are often couched in quite different terminology and illustrated by very different data. The book is abundant in very interesting material from a whole array of languages, some of them quite ‘exotic’, and contains valuable contributions to language description, typology, and linguistic theory. The major outcome of this volume, besides the purely empirical one, consists, in my opinion, in clearly showing that the interaction and collaboration of linguists working on different aspects of a single notional domain and approaching it from divergent perspectives may be very fruitful.”
Peter M. Arkadiev, Russian Academy of Sciences, in Studies in Language Vol. 33:3 (2009)
“Ce volume est la meilleure preuve que la typologie est en plein essor depuis quelques annees. En apportant regulierement de nouveaux faits sur des langues peu ou mal etudiees, en proposant des theories explicatives qui suscitent la discussion, ce genre d'ouvrages contribue al'enrichissement de nos connaissances sur les mecanismes qui sont aI'reuvre dans l'expression des fonctions centrales.”
Jack Feuillet, in Bulletin de Societé de Linguistique, 102(2), 2007
Cited by (9)
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2022. Word order in the input to Argentinian Spanish-learning children. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 13:1 ► pp. 93 ff.
DeCoursey, Christina
Zehentner, Eva
Fernández-Cuesta, Julia & Nieves Rodríguez-Ledesma
Halevy, Rivka
2020. Transitivity and valence. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 465 ff.
Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog & Seongha Rhee
Barðdal, Jóhanna
2018. Introduction. In Non-canonically case-marked subjects [Studies in Language Companion Series, 200], ► pp. 1 ff.
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